Eco modes (and start-up times): neither are currently satisfactory

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  • gomezgomez Member Posts: 2,073 ✭✭
    edited 30 July 2013, 6:10PM
    gomez said:

    Of course if you record Neighbours as a matter of course then it will have been warmed up ready for the past 10/15 minutes.

    What auto-delete was designed for.
  • cm kaycm kay Member Posts: 1
    edited 8 January 2015, 4:54PM
    hi...

    just got our YV box ...set up neat...picture great for 10 minutes then nothing...nada...wont fire up, wont switch on or off from front panel, no loop through.....not impressed

    ****!
  • edited 8 January 2015, 4:54PM
    cm kay said:

    hi...

    just got our YV box ...set up neat...picture great for 10 minutes then nothing...nada...wont fire up, wont switch on or off from front panel, no loop through.....not impressed

    ****!

    Was it a Huawei(TalkTalk) or a Humax?
  • Steve MullinsSteve Mullins Member Posts: 58
    edited 15 January 2017, 8:13PM
    You've eaten a whole crumpet by the time it boots up - a very non technical gauge on start up times!
  • Mark MMark M Member Posts: 5
    edited 3 March 2015, 3:42PM
    HI,,,,

    I recently got a TT Huawei box, not impressed with it at all, mine is set to eco low. Left of standby all night, I switch it on the following evening, 10 minutes later I am still stuck waiting on the 'Nearly Ready' screen, I eventually give up and switch it off and on using the button on the back and it boots up in a couple of minutes..
  • edited 8 January 2015, 4:54PM
    Mark M said:

    HI,,,,

    I recently got a TT Huawei box, not impressed with it at all, mine is set to eco low. Left of standby all night, I switch it on the following evening, 10 minutes later I am still stuck waiting on the 'Nearly Ready' screen, I eventually give up and switch it off and on using the button on the back and it boots up in a couple of minutes..

    If that happens repeatedly you have a faulty box which TalkTalk wil be happy to replace.
  • Mark MMark M Member Posts: 5
    edited 3 March 2015, 3:42PM
    Thanks gwatuk, I have tried report they have said they are sending out a Brightspark, well that's great the kids watch the TV in the morning, so by the time he get here I will of cleared the fault. lol
  • Mark MMark M Member Posts: 5
    edited 3 March 2015, 3:42PM
    Mark M said:

    HI,,,,

    I recently got a TT Huawei box, not impressed with it at all, mine is set to eco low. Left of standby all night, I switch it on the following evening, 10 minutes later I am still stuck waiting on the 'Nearly Ready' screen, I eventually give up and switch it off and on using the button on the back and it boots up in a couple of minutes..

    Thanks gwatuk, I have tried report they have said they are sending out a Brightspark, well that's great the kids watch the TV in the morning, so by the time he get here I will of cleared the fault. lol
  • Patrick LoftusPatrick Loftus Member Posts: 12
    edited 14 January 2014, 10:08PM
    Just switched mine to High Eco mode, as I noticed the hard drive was constantly whirring in LOW.
    It's the wear and tear and the heat that bothers me more than the cost - I'm worried it will reduce life span of the box.

  • Mark James1Mark James1 Member Posts: 37
    edited 14 July 2014, 9:31PM
    Sorry to be again bumping an old thread, but I am astonished after two years of owning this unit that they still haven't bothered to spin down the hard drive regardless of ECO settings; it's one thing to maintain low power to solid state/volatile memory to avoid rebooting completely but (as I often harp on) my old Humax 9200 this replaced would spin down on standby and spool up when it was time to record or when viewing in just a few seconds. It's a function of the hard drive itself so there isn't even much for the developers to do!
  • Mike70Mike70 Member Posts: 43 ✭✭
    edited 10 December 2016, 5:15PM
    I just saw the official response from 3years ago re the eco startup times. Surely three years is long enough to have made SOME time improvement! It still takes over two minutes from high Eco mode & for those of us that care about the planet & the cost of electricity this is the only option. Please make some improvements.
  • KeithKeith Member, Super User Posts: 2,454 ✭✭✭
    edited 4 March 2017, 10:29AM
    Hi Mike - indeed the only real software change speed up in startup times came in on the 30/10/2012 update (as noted under item 39 in the consolidated list of improvements and feature requests). Since then the biggest speed ups have come from the newer hardware, e.g. the Humax T2xxx are significantly faster (and also consume less power than the T1xxx boxes). There is then of course the impact of the mobile app, when YouView launched that did not exist. For the app to work the box is required to be in the low eco mode and so I suspect that has naturally moved more people over to the low eco mode. There is then the start up tip that suggests changing eco mode for faster startups which probably influences another bunch of users. As such those running in high eco mode is probably a much smaller proportion of the user base than it was at launch.

    Nevertheless, in an ideal world, I would still like to see YouView make further changes in this area (although given we are now 2-3 years on and there are still quite a lot of good small feature requests going unaddressed I would prefer to see some effort on those first).
  • Mark James1Mark James1 Member Posts: 37
    edited 6 March 2017, 10:48PM
    My Humax T1xxx box, fully up to date, still does not spin down the drive except in the high eco mode, which would be the single biggest energy saving and there is no reason it could not spin down even during normal operation, after a period of not writing to the disk (ie recording). It's just bad design. Instinct tells me the separation of YouView hardware/firmware and software platforms means it just cannot be done. A good idea, ruined by committee. I hope the next gen devices are a better experience for people.
  • RoyRoy Member, Super User Posts: 17,812 ✭✭✭
    edited 7 December 2016, 8:39AM

    My Humax T1xxx box, fully up to date, still does not spin down the drive except in the high eco mode, which would be the single biggest energy saving and there is no reason it could not spin down even during normal operation, after a period of not writing to the disk (ie recording). It's just bad design. Instinct tells me the separation of YouView hardware/firmware and software platforms means it just cannot be done. A good idea, ruined by committee. I hope the next gen devices are a better experience for people.

    Hi Mark

    You do realise that in normal operation, it is always recording, for pause/rewind live TV duties?

    So it can't spin down then.

    The only time it could spin down at all is when the disc spins down in High Eco mode; but since it is supposed to be alert to things that High Eco mode is allowed to sleep through, this would require that all the triggers for all these things be in the silicon at such times. And I wonder if there is room?
    ‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
  • Mark James1Mark James1 Member Posts: 37
    edited 15 April 2015, 3:11PM

    My Humax T1xxx box, fully up to date, still does not spin down the drive except in the high eco mode, which would be the single biggest energy saving and there is no reason it could not spin down even during normal operation, after a period of not writing to the disk (ie recording). It's just bad design. Instinct tells me the separation of YouView hardware/firmware and software platforms means it just cannot be done. A good idea, ruined by committee. I hope the next gen devices are a better experience for people.

    Of course you're right, about the live TV bit, feeling a bit silly for overlooking it mid-rant (as it's something I almost never use).

    But if the unit is not being watched and not recording, I see no need for the disk to spin. My previous Humax box was quite capable of holding the recording schedule in memory and spinning the drive only to record. They could have used Wake-on-LAN to enable standby to respond to recording instructions via the app. So I maintain the 'regular' standby mode could be much better, and by now given the number of complains about the issue, I can only assume an insurmountable design flaw preventing such improvements.

    It wouldn't even take much RAM to handle instant replay for a short time, with an option to use the HDD to make it longer.
  • RoyRoy Member, Super User Posts: 17,812 ✭✭✭
    edited 7 December 2016, 8:39AM

    My Humax T1xxx box, fully up to date, still does not spin down the drive except in the high eco mode, which would be the single biggest energy saving and there is no reason it could not spin down even during normal operation, after a period of not writing to the disk (ie recording). It's just bad design. Instinct tells me the separation of YouView hardware/firmware and software platforms means it just cannot be done. A good idea, ruined by committee. I hope the next gen devices are a better experience for people.

    The Wake-on-LAN issue (and I'm not trying to be your nemesis, really!) is that nothing is ever sent to interrupt the YouView box, over the LAN; by design, for security, it never acts as a server.

    It gets recording instructions via a Wake-on-timer approach, whereby it is triggered internally to go and poll the message server to see if there are any recording requests.

    While arguably less efficient, it is unarguably safer, as the bad guys can't start a dialogue with your YouView box at all, ever.

    You should not though, extrapolate to insurmountable design flaws; there are all sorts of things that I would judge fixable that have not been fixed since day one despite much pressure from here, and I might just extrapolate to insurmountable backlog, or possibly ennui, or doctrinaire differences, or some such.
    ‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
  • KeithKeith Member, Super User Posts: 2,454 ✭✭✭
    edited 14 April 2017, 6:24PM
    As an update to this rather old topic - the software update of 24/11/2015 has replaced the eco mode setting with a standby mode setting. This new setting has 3 states: smart standby, energy saver, always ready. The latter two would appear to be equivalent to the old high and low eco modes. The new smart mode effectively runs as the low eco/always ready mode in the day but overnight (1am to 5am by default) will switch to the lower energy saving mode and hence give a hybrid mode that reduces overall energy usage without particular impact on typical usage patterns.
  • John BarrettJohn Barrett Member Posts: 1
    edited 17 December 2015, 4:00PM
    Keith1 said:

    As an update to this rather old topic - the software update of 24/11/2015 has replaced the eco mode setting with a standby mode setting. This new setting has 3 states: smart standby, energy saver, always ready. The latter two would appear to be equivalent to the old high and low eco modes. The new smart mode effectively runs as the low eco/always ready mode in the day but overnight (1am to 5am by default) will switch to the lower energy saving mode and hence give a hybrid mode that reduces overall energy usage without particular impact on typical usage patterns.

    To only limit the range of times to those given is mad; my old box is off between 11pm and 12pm. My sons between 12am and 6pm as he is at work, I am retired but do not watch anything until the lunch time news,

  • Adrian Wood2Adrian Wood2 Member Posts: 9
    edited 17 December 2015, 4:07PM
    Keith1 said:

    As an update to this rather old topic - the software update of 24/11/2015 has replaced the eco mode setting with a standby mode setting. This new setting has 3 states: smart standby, energy saver, always ready. The latter two would appear to be equivalent to the old high and low eco modes. The new smart mode effectively runs as the low eco/always ready mode in the day but overnight (1am to 5am by default) will switch to the lower energy saving mode and hence give a hybrid mode that reduces overall energy usage without particular impact on typical usage patterns.

    I agree, that was my original suggestion for this "hybrid power mode":

    "1. User chooses a time for the option "Start Eco Mode High at ...
    2. User choosed a time for the option "End Eco Mode High at .."

    At least they've partially implemented the suggestion (eventually)!
  • petkolpetkol Member Posts: 213
    edited 17 December 2015, 11:53PM
    Keith1 said:

    As an update to this rather old topic - the software update of 24/11/2015 has replaced the eco mode setting with a standby mode setting. This new setting has 3 states: smart standby, energy saver, always ready. The latter two would appear to be equivalent to the old high and low eco modes. The new smart mode effectively runs as the low eco/always ready mode in the day but overnight (1am to 5am by default) will switch to the lower energy saving mode and hence give a hybrid mode that reduces overall energy usage without particular impact on typical usage patterns.

    I haven't been on the forums much over the past couple of years - I see the odd email updating some of the longstanding original issues and occaisionally comment.

    As I recall this issue came about because of the time it takes for the Youview boxes to start up from the most economical standby mode. Have Youview ever given an explanation as to why their system takes so long to start up?

    I have seen one of the newer 'non-recording' BT Youview boxes and was surprised that it seemed to take just as long to start up as the original disc based PVR type boxes.  

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